BDS plea to anthropologists garners 360 names

(JTA) — More than 350 anthropologists from around the world have endorsed a boycott of Israel and its academic institutions.

The statement was posted Oct. 1 on the website jadaliyya.com with 231 signatories and a call for others to add their names to the list. By last Friday, the list had reached 360 names.

“As a community of scholars who study problems of power, oppression, and cultural hegemony, we have a moral responsibility to speak out and demand accountability from Israel and our own governments,” reads the statement, which endorses “boycott[ing] Israeli academic institutions that are complicit in these violations.”

Israeli academic institutions, the statement said, “are complicit with the occupation and oppression of Palestinians” with “intimate connections between Israeli academic institutions and the military, security, and political establishments in Israel.”

Among the signatories are 13 academics each from the City University of New York and Columbia. Nine cosignatories are listed as being from Harvard and eight from Yale.